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W Lorenz, M. Bicher, G. Wurzer:
"Adjacency in hospital planning - Using Newton´s differential equation";
Talk: MATHMOD 2015 - 8th Vienna International Conference on Mathematical Modelling, Vienna; 2015-02-18 - 2015-02-20; in: "Proceedings of MathMod 2015", IFAC Online Conference Paper Archive, MathMod 2015 (2015), 6 pages.

Adjacencies stand at the beginning of a multitude of planning tasks. Especially in hospital planning they are essential for describing relationships between different organizational units - e.g. `close´, `distant´ or `neutral´. Mathematically, these terms map to relative weights between each pair of units in the range [-1, 1] which are put into a (symmetric) adjacency matrix. This matrix subsequently determines relative locations of individual spaces (preliminary space layout). The paper deals with the effective definition of this adjacency matrix in the context of early-stage architectural planning. In contrast to current planning practice, which looks at each adjacency relation in isolation, our approach uses a Newtonian gravitation model to propagate changes to a single relationship immediately to the whole space layout. As a result, we are able to supply architects with a design tool that accelerates the definition of adjacencies and lets them preview the preliminary space layout at the same time.

Adjacencies, gravitational model, planning tool, hospital planning, space layout planning

http://publik.tuwien.ac.at/files/PubDat_237766.pdf